Generally, a refrigerator is an apparatus for freezing or refrigerating objects stored therein by lowering a temperature inside a storage compartment using cold air generated by a refrigerating system.
A refrigerator employs a refrigerating system in order to create cold air to be supplied to its storage compartment. The refrigerating cycle undergoes a compression process, a condensation process, an expansion process and an evaporation process, and returns to the compression process in a cyclical fashion. Cold air created through the evaporation process is supplied to the inside of the storage compartment to lower the temperature of objects stored in the storage compartment.
A refrigerator also may be provided with a freezing compartment which is configured to keep the temperature inside the compartment below the freezing point in order to store objects in a frozen state and a refrigerating compartment which is configured to keep the temperature inside the compartment below the ambient temperature in order to store objects at a refrigerated temperature.
The freezing compartment and the refrigerating compartment each may be provided with a plurality of shelves for dividing the compartment vertically so as to accommodate objects having various sizes and to efficiently manage the compartment. The shelves may be detachably secured to the inner wall of the compartment so that they are able to be installed at different heights.
A refrigerator may include a plurality of support ribs formed on both lateral inner surfaces of the storage compartment such that shelves are slidably fitted on the ribs. Alternatively, a shelf may be installed in the storage compartment of a refrigerator in such a way that mounting rails, each of which has a plurality of holes formed at different heights, are attached to the inner wall of the storage compartment, and a pair of cantilevers provided on a shelf are fitted in the respective holes.